ScientistPankaj: Wow! Photographer spots Boeing's Starliner near space station from London

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June 6, 2022

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The Launchpad

Photographer spots Starliner near space station from London yard

(Szabolcs Nagy/SpaceStationGuys.com)

Set phasers to stunned: A photographer on the ground spotted a Boeing's Starliner 250 miles (400 kilometers) overhead from London just as it was about to meet up with the International Space Station last month.

"It felt like no other ISS imaging session before," photographer Szabolcs Nagy said. Here's how it was done.

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Infamous asteroid Apophis 'rediscovered' as scientists test planetary defense mechanisms

(NASA/JPL-Caltech and NSF/AUI/GBO)

A test of whether asteroid defense systems could spot a potentially hazardous near-Earth asteroid on its closest approach successfully "rediscovered" the infamous asteroid 99942 Apophis, which will make a close encounter with our planet in 2029.

For this asteroid defense exercise, all previous data on Apophis were made inaccessible. This meant that astronomers had to start afresh during the asteroid's close approach, which began in December 2020 and culminated in March 2021. Would Apophis slip through the net, or could our network of sky surveys find it?

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Venus crossed the sun's face 10 years ago. Most people alive will never see the sight again.

(Nasa/Getty Images)

For many of us, the past two years have delivered a lesson in not taking things for granted. The chaos of the pandemic disrupted relationships, trade and the privileges we often enjoy without a second thought.

As a resolute chaser of celestial spectacles, I've spent my career traveling to witness some of the greatest sights in the sky. Indeed, I've been fortunate enough to check off practically every entry on the astronomical bucket list thanks to the convenience of the global travel network. Only when it ground to a halt in 2020 did I fully realize how lucky I've been.

Now, the opportunities are returning once more, but some events are just too rare. That's why 10 years ago, with no concept of a global lockdown in my mind, I embarked on a 16,000-mile (26,000 kilometers) round trip to witness something that would never again occur in my lifetime: a transit of Venus.

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Spaceflight

NASA's Artemis 1 moon rocket returns to launch pad for crucial tests

(Gregg Newton/Getty Images)

NASA's Artemis 1 moon mission is back at the launch pad.

Technicians at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida began rolling the Artemis 1 stack — a Space Launch System (SLS) rocket topped by an Orion crew capsule — out of the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) around 12:10 a.m. EDT (0410 GMT) this morning.

The trip took 10 hours.

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Blue Origin's NS-21 space tourists want to launch again (and again)

(Blue Origin)

Less than two hours after they landed from space, the six members of Blue Origin's fifth crewed mission were all sure of at least one thing: one flight into space was not enough.

"Does everyone want to go back?" asked Kevin Sprogue, Blue Origin's CrewMember 7, who served as the NS-21 passengers' guide throughout two days of training to launch on the New Shepard rocket on Saturday (June 4).

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3 Chinese astronauts arrive at Tiangong space station for 6-month stay

(Vcg/Getty Images)

China's three-person Shenzhou 14 mission arrived at Tianhe, the core module of the under-construction Tiangong, early Sunday morning (June 5), about six hours after lifting off from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert.

The three Shenzhou 14 crewmembers — commander Chen Dong, Liu Yang and Cai Xuzhe — are expected to spend about six months aboard the 54-foot-long (16.6 meters) Tianhe ("Harmony of the Heavens"), which launched to low Earth orbit in April 2021.

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Science & Astronomy

These bizarre spiky Mars rocks likely formed by erosion and ancient fractures

$These bizarre spiky Mars rocks likely formed by erosion and ancient fractures$

(NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

The Curiosity rover spotted(opens in new tab) the sinewy rocks on May 15, according to raw images the mission sends down to Earth. The images were obtained on Sol (Martian day) 3474 of the mission, as Curiosity speeds towards completing its first decade of work on Mars on Aug. 6.

"The spikes are most likely the cemented fillings of ancient fractures in a sedimentary rock," the SETI Institute wrote of the feature on May 26. Sedimentary rock is formed by layers of sand and water, but the rest of the rock feature "was made of softer material and was eroded away," the institute added on Twitter.

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Iron meteorites point to millions of years of chaos in early solar system

(NASA/JPL–Caltech)

A great demolition derby, with a chaotic mess of asteroids and forming planets constantly slamming into each other, took place in the early solar system between 7.8 million and 11.7 million years after the sun formed, according to a new analysis of iron meteorites that were once part of metallic asteroid cores.

An international team of researchers analyzed isotopes of palladium, silver and platinum in 18 iron meteorites found on Earth to better understand the evolution of their parent bodies. Metallic asteroids contain dense iron cores, and iron meteorites originate from these cores, blasted off by collisions with other asteroids.

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SpaceX

SpaceX's Starship will deploy next-gen Starlinks Pez-dispenser style

(SpaceX)

SpaceX's Starship vehicle will operate like a gigantic flying Pez dispenser on some missions, if all goes according to plan. When it comes online, Starship will be the biggest and most powerful space transportation system ever built.

SpaceX is developing the vehicle to take people and cargo to the moon and Mars and to perform a variety of other spaceflight tasks - including deploying the next-gen version of its Starlink internet satellites.

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SpaceX to launch moon bricks, space sutures and more to the space station soon

(Tony Gray and Kevin O'Connell)

A lot of science gear will go up to the International Space Station soon on SpaceX's 25th cargo resupply service mission to the orbital lab.

Ranging broadly in their focus, the science headed to the International Space Station (ISS) includes investigations into immune system aging and recovery, global dust composition and its effect on the climate, how communities of microorganisms in soil are affected by microgravity, and more.

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Search for Life

The aliens are all hanging out on Dyson spheres circling white dwarfs, physicist argues

(Marc Ward/Stocktrek Images/Getty)

So far no one has found evidence of intelligent aliens elsewhere in the cosmos. But if they do exist, they might be hanging out on Dyson spheres circling the husks of sunlike stars called white dwarfs scattered throughout the Milky Way, a new paper argues.

And that's there we should be focusing our search for extraterrestrials, according to Ben Zuckerman, an emeritus professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California Los Angeles and co-author of a new study on the subject.

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